RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

It took fire of­fi­cers sev­er­al hours to ex­tin­guish a blaze that even­tu­al­ly gut­ted a com­mer­cial build­ing in Aranguez, San Juan, on Sat­ur­day.

The build­ing’s heavy bur­glar-proof­ing and its stock, which cre­at­ed ac­cess is­sues, in­side were said to have con­tributed to the dif­fi­cul­ty in fight­ing the fire.

Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Arnold Bris­to said the fire start­ed around 1.30 pm on the up­per floor of CVS Cash & Car­ry.

“When the ap­pli­ances ar­rived from Wright­son Road Head­quar­ters and San Juan Fire Sta­tion, the of­fi­cers would have seen smoke bil­low­ing from the top floor and of­fi­cers en­gaged them­selves in fire fight­ing op­er­a­tions,” he said.

“How­ev­er, the chal­lenge we have is that the build­ing is heav­i­ly bur­glar proofed, as well as the stock­piles in the build­ing made it very dif­fi­cult for us to ma­noeu­vre in­side to gain ac­cess to bring the fire un­der con­trol ... there’s a lot of com­bustibles in there.”

Bris­to ad­vised busi­ness­peo­ple to get guid­ance from the Fire Pre­ven­tion De­part­ment on how to “arrange your place so that in the event of like some­thing like this, ac­cess would be easy for us to be able to save your busi­ness.”

He said, “When they make it dif­fi­cult like this, the loss­es will be tremen­dous and this is what the Fire Pre­ven­tion De­part­ment is about in deal­ing with busi­ness­es in the com­mu­ni­ty. We are here to help you in mak­ing your busi­ness bet­ter, not for you to lose it like this.”

At the front of the build­ing, fire of­fi­cers tried to break a glass win­dow to gain ac­cess but could not get in. They even­tu­al­ly had to use a hy­draulic cut­ter to get through the bur­glar-proof­ing and gain ac­cess.

An of­fi­cer was al­so in­jured when a piece of glass fell on him and he had to be tak­en to hos­pi­tal for treat­ment. Fire of­fi­cers are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to the scene to de­ter­mine the cause and ori­gin of the blaze.

The fire re-ig­nit­ed on Sat­ur­day night but by 10 am yes­ter­day, fire of­fi­cers were able to com­plete­ly ex­tin­guish the fire.